Where can you pick up your Xanax prescription, grab a box of condoms and have an eel-avocado roll all in one transaction? As far as I can tell, the Walgreens on Powell Street, just south of Union Square, is probably the only establishment in San Francisco that offers you the luxury of getting all three of these in one go.
The presence of sushi in a drugstore isn’t too unusual by itself — I mean, you can get sushi at gas stations now. However, gas-station sushi is preprepared, mass-produced and shipped by truck; at the Powell Street Walgreens, there are actually two sushi chefs behind the sushi-bar counter and an array of raw fish and vegetables in those clear chilled cases, just like at any real sushi restaurant.
Walgreens’s media-relations specialist told me that “the Powell Street store … has unique customers who are looking for fast and fresh food solutions.” I couldn’t agree more — I am a unique customer whose stomach is essentially a giant problem set in search of [food] solutions.
I confess to being fascinated by quotidian spaces like this. Corporate drugstores like Walgreens are generally interchangeable slabs, drafted by an architect once and mass-produced with only minor changes. Depressing as they are, we spend a significant portion of our lives in these soulless voids of capitalist enterprise, if only because we live in capitalism, and said voids are all it is capable of creating.
“There’s a crack in everything—that’s where the light gets in.” Sometimes it even gets in Walgreens.
And yet even the most hollow big-box store can harbor interesting cultural artifacts. In my childhood hometown of Tucson — a hellscape of heat-roasted strip malls and track homes — we used to go see punk shows at a Sega Arcade in the mall and attend poetry readings at a Starbucks whose manager had gone off the corporate script.
This was all we had in terms of capital-C culture, and to us, these spaces were more than merely something corporate. To quote Leonard Cohen: “There’s a crack in everything—that’s where the light gets in.” Sometimes it even gets in Walgreens.
I don’t think the sushi bar in Union Square’s Walgreens is some kind of great oddity—apparently, there are 19 Walgreens with sushi, according to their PR person — but it is certainly bizarre to me that a drugstore that looks identical everywhere else on the planet would have one weird store in SF with sushi chefs in the middle. (In general, you could drop me off in a Chicago Walgreens or a Phoenix Walgreens or a Redding Walgreens, and I would have no idea what city I was in until I got to the tourist T-shirt aisle.)
If you haven’t been in the Union Square Walgreens, I’ll say that it’s the only Walgreens I’ve been in that doesn’t really look like a Walgreens. The ceiling has what appear to be antique tin ceiling tiles — likely reproductions, but still. And there are way more San Francisco–related paintings and colors on the wall than usual. It looks kind of like an AMC movie theater, with its soda and Slurpee machines. Its only resemblance to the normal Walgreens stores is that all the employees seem just as depressed as they do at any Walgreens. (Thank God they have a union.)
In the center, just as you enter, there is an oval-shaped bar called the “Upmarket” with a barista, a cashier and two sushi chefs. The pair of sushi chefs work fast and quickly put out boxes of fresh sushi in the case in front of them. They seem friendly enough but don’t have to interact with customers that much, mainly because the fruits (fish?) of their labor end up in plastic boxes that they place in front of them.
“The chefs are employed by AFC Sushi, a third-party operator who is a leader in on-premise sushi food service,” Allison told me. That was good to hear, because when I look for sushi, I tend to look for third-party contractors that are leaders, rather than followers, in on-premise sushi food service.
I reached out to Walgreens corporate to ask how this Walgreens got this way. Walgreens’s media-relations specialist, Allison Mack, told me that “the Powell Street store, like other high-profile stores, has unique customers who are looking for fast and fresh food solutions.”
I couldn’t agree more — I, myself, am a unique customer whose stomach is essentially a giant problem set in search of [food] solutions. Mack continued: “As sushi has become more mainstream, we thought adding this choice to our offering would really delight our customers.” (I’m unsure if “mainSTREAM” was intentional, but good punning regardless, Ms. Mack.)
It turns out that while the sushi bar is within the aegis of the Walgreens store, the sushi bar itself is actually run by a third-party contractor. “The chefs are employed by AFC Sushi, a third-party operator who is a leader in on-premise sushi food service,” Allison told me. That was good to hear, because when I look for sushi, I tend to look for third-party contractors that are leaders, rather than followers, in on-premise sushi food service.
And speaking of leaders, let’s talk about the actual taste of the sushi these esteemed third-party operators are producing. First, I tried a “chef’s sampler,” an appellation that is appended to much of the sushi being sold. It’s possible they only have a limited number of labels and just slap this one on whichever sashimi they make. In this case, the “chef’s sampler” looked like salmon sashimi and cost $11.99. The salmon tasted decent, but the wasabi and accompanying “low sodium” soy-sauce packet did little to enhance the flavor. I did not savor and slowly eat the chef’s sampler the way I usually do with sashimi.
The eel-avocado roll ($7.99) was a bit better — the flavors were strong, the brown rice was well-cooked, and the eel tasted fresh and sweet. Still, the overall profile wasn’t that different from most prepared sushis that didn’t have the benefit of an in-store sushi chef.
I was a little disappointed at the end of my meal and wished I’d just opted for some to-go sushi from my neighborhood sushi bar. The fact that I’d bought cold medicine with my sushi was a novelty, but the convenience factor wasn’t worth the cost.
So my Walgreens sushi experience was so-so. How do others like it? “Sushi continues to be a strong performer among our fresh food offerings,” Mack told me.
Moral of the story: if you’re in the neighborhood of Union Square and looking for food made by a leader in on-premise sushi food service, the Walgreens sushi bar is a strong performer — even if this unique customer thought it was just OK.
All photos courtesy of The Bold Italic.
